Аннотация

Pilgrims and Popes introduces the foundational fifteen hundred years of the history of Christianity, from Jesus to the eve of the Reformation. The crucial decisions of the first centuries have indelibly shaped the subsequent journey of the Christian faith movement. The book tells how the Christian faith story unfolded in dialectic movements: hegemony and emancipation; institutionalization and protest; petrification and renewal; missionary involvement in the world and separation from the world. The book bridges the gap between the present and the seemingly remote world of the first fifteen hundred years of Christianity in the West by engaging with present-day readers' cultures and contexts. The rich material is presented in an easily readable way, combined with charts and with questions for discussion and deepening reflection. This study book will be a welcome learning tool in classrooms and in churches, particularly in the context of the Global South.

Аннотация

Beyond the Walls of Separation is an essential and easy-to-read guidebook for chaplains and volunteers working in the context of prison, and for all those who are professionally or through family links related to those in prison. The book tells the story of what life behind bars is, and how inmates experience transformation through Christian faith: People at the crisis points of their life, where they are shattered, and where little is left of what made them, may experience life as fragile and as a transparent filter for the mysterious. Yet they also may experience God's life-giving presence. Love, expressed in forgiveness–against all odds, against all merits and previous experiences–lies at the root of many stories of transformation that emerge from prison.
The book guides visitors to approach inmates without condescension, with an awareness of the social dimension of power and inequality, and with sensitivity to the suffering and alienation that individual prisoners experience. The many years of prison ministry in different cultural contexts and with inmates from all nations have taught the author that Christ does not need to be brought to prison through visitors, through evangelistic events, or through Christian outreach. He is already powerfully present in prison.